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Thursday, March 30, 2006

CGI Catch-Up pt. 1

There was once a time when I ran down to the theatre to catch every new animated movie that came out. But now, not so much. I think why can be summed up by a quote from a recent review of Ice Age 2. "With computer animation, filmmakers can tell any kind of story they want. So why are we getting nothing but talking animals making fart jokes?"

Anyway, today, since I got caught up on all the work I wanted to do, I decided to rent some of the big CGI blockbusters of the past year-and-a-half and play catch-up. I was thinking of doing a massive article over on the main website, eh, but I'm lazy. Here's what I've watched so far:

Shark Tale - Yikes. There's absolutly nothing spectacular about this one. I've seen the same story told in half-hour episodes of lesser cartoons. And the pop culture reference jokes? Not even I got them. I think this marks the beginning of the end for "the DreamWorks formula." 1 Nib.

The Polar Express - I gotta give props to Robert Zemeckis. The dude wrote and directed one of my favourite trilogies, Back to the Future. When I heard he was going to be doing an all-motion-capture animated film, I was...curious. There is some truly spectacular animation going on here...if you ignore the dead faces on all the characters. And, my big lament when it comes to Christmas movies, is that they fail to capture a sense of magic about the season. Polar Express actually manages to capture the magic in a few scenes. However, big, loud, action sequences used to fill out the movie once again proves why children's books that top out at 24 pages shouldn't be made into films. Surprisingly good, though. 3 Nibs.

Oh, supper's ready. I'll be back later this evening with Madagascar and Chicken Little.